(The same wishful UN theme cropped up in arecent spectacular which is not science fiction,Fifty-Five Days in Peking[1963]. There, topicallyenough, the Chinese, the Boxers, play the roleof Martian invaders who unite the Earthmen,in this case the United States, England, Russia,France, Germany, Italy and Japan.) A great enoughdisaster cancels all enmities and calls upon theutmost concentration of earth resources.Science – technology – is conceived of asthe great unifier.Thus the science fiction filmsalso project a Utopian fantasy. In the classicmodels of Utopian thinking – Plato’s Republic,Campanella’s City of the Sun, More’s Utopia,Swift’s land of the Houyhnhnms, Voltaire’sEldorado – society had worked out a perfectconsensus. In these societies reasonablenesshad achieved an unbreakable supremacy overthe emotions. Since no disagreement or socialconflict was intellectually plausible, none waspossible. As in Melville’sTypee, ‘they all thinkthe same’. The universal rule of reason meantuniversal agreement. It is interesting, too,that societies in which reason was picturedas totally ascendant were also traditionallypictured as having an ascetic or materiallyfrugal and economically simple mode oflife. But in the Utopian world communityprojected by science fiction films, totallypacified and ruled by scientific consensus, thedemand for simplicity of material existencewould be absurd.Yet alongside the hopeful fantasy of moralsimplification and international unity embodiedin the science fiction films lurk the deepestanxieties about contemporary existence. I don’tmean only the very real trauma of the Bomb– that it has been used, that there are enoughnow to kill everyone on Earth many times over,that those new bombs may very well be used.Besides these new anxieties about physicaldisaster, the prospect of universal mutilationand even annihilation, the science fiction filmsreflect powerful anxieties about the conditionof the individual psyche.For science fiction films may also bedescribed as a popular mythology for thecontemporarynegativeimagination about theimpersonal. The other-world creatures thatseek to take ‘us’ over are an ‘it’, not a ‘they’.The planetary invaders are usually zombie-like.Their movements are either cool, mechanical,or lumbering, blobby. But it amounts to thesame thing. If they are non-human in form, theyproceed with an absolutely regular, unalterablemovement (unalterable save by destruction).If they are human in form – dressed in spacesuits, etc. – then they obey the most rigidmilitary discipline, and display no personalcharacteristics whatsoever. And it is thisregime of emotionlessness, of impersonality,of regimentation, which they will impose onthe Earth if they are successful. ‘No morelove, no more beauty, no more pain’, boasts aconverted earthling inThe Invasion of the BodySnatchers(1956). The half-earthling, earthling,half-alien children inThe Children of the Damned(1960) are absolutely emotionless, move as a
